Aug 11 JDN 2460534

I’m writing this post just after getting back from Gen Con, one of the world’s largest gaming conventions. After several days of basically constant activity from the time we woke up to the time we went to bed, I’m looking forward to some downtime to recuperate.

This year, we were there not just to have fun, but also to pitch our own game, a card-based storytelling game called Pax ad Astra. We already have one offer from a small publisher, but we’re currently waiting to hear back from several others to see if we can do better.

Games might seem like a frivolous thing, a waste of valuable time; but in fact they can enrich our lives in many ways. They deserve to be respected as an art form unto themselves.

Gen Con is primarily a tabletop game convention, but some of the best examples of what I want to say come from video games, so I’ll be using examples of both.

Games can be beautiful. Climb up a mountain in Breath of the Wild and just look out over the expanse. It’s not quite the same as overlooking a real mountain vista, but it’s shockingly close.

Games can be moving. The Life is Strange series has so many powerful emotional moments it’s honestly a little overwhelming.

Games can be political. The game Monopoly was originally intended as an argument against monopoly capitalism (which is deeply ironic in hindsight). Cyberpunk fiction has always been trying to warn us about the future we’re building, and that message comes across even clearer when immersed in game, either the tabletop version Cyberpunk RED or the video game version Cyberpunk 2077. Even a game like Call of Duty: Black Ops, which many might initially dismiss as another mindless shooter, can actually have some profound statements to make about war, covert operations, and the moral compromises that they always entail.

Games can challenge us to think. Even some of the most ancient games, like Senet and Go, required deep strategic thinking in order to win. Modern games continue this tradition in an endless variety of ways, from Catan to StarCraft.

Games can teach us. I don’t just mean games that are designed to be educational, though certainly plenty of those exist. Minecraft involves active participation in building and changing the world around you, every bit as good a learning toy as Lego, but with almost endless blocks to work with.

Games let us explore our own identity. One of the great things about role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons (or its digital counterpart, Baldur’s Gate 3) is that they allow us to inhabit someone different from ourselves, and explore what it’s like to be someone else. We can learn a lot about ourselves and others through such experiences. I know an awful lot of transgender people who played RPGs as different genders before they transitioned.

Games are immersive. One certainly can get immersed into a book or a film, but the interactivity of a game makes that immersion much more powerful. The difference between hearing about someone doing something, watching them do something, and doing it yourself can be quite profound. Video games are especially immersive; they can really make it feel like you are right there, actually participating in the action. Part of what makes Call of Duty: Black Ops so effective in its political messaging is the fact that you aren’t just seeing all these morally-ambiguous actions; you’re actively participating in them, and being forced to make your own difficult choices.

But in the end, games are fun. Maybe sometimes they are a frivolous time-wasting activity—and maybe, as a society, we need to have more respect for frivolous time-wasting activities. Human beings need rest and recreation to function. We aren’t machines. We can’t constantly be productive all the time.